Running tight on C: drive? Here's how to free up more space for more stuff.

While the price of SSDs has fallen in the last few years, wasted space is still undesirable and Windows is just as good as ever at stealing those precious gigabytes. Like that one cousin at every Thanksgiving that leaves a ring of gravy around their plate, Windows has a bad habit of not cleaning up after itself—it takes more than it needs, unless you pay attention to how much it's taking and do something about it!

Introduction

When setting up infrastructure, getting your applications up and running will often be your primary concern. However, making your applications to function correctly without addressing the security needs of your infrastructure could have devastating consequences down the line.

In this guide, we will talk about some basic security practices that are best to configure before or as you set up your applications.

SSH Keys

SSH keys are a pair of cryptographic keys that can be used to authenticate to an SSH server as an alternative to password-based logins. A private and public key pair are created prior to authentication. The private key is kept secret and secure by the user, while the public key can be shared with anyone.

Regular use of cleaning sprays has an impact on lung health comparable with smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, according to a new study.

The research followed more than 6,000 people over a 20 year period and found women in particular suffered significant health problems after long-term use of these products.

Lung function decline in women working as cleaners or regularly using cleaning products at home was comparable to smoking 20 cigarettes a day over 10 to 20 years.

“While the short-term effects of cleaning chemicals on asthma are becoming increasingly well documented, we lack knowledge of the long-term impact,” said Professor Cecile Svanes, a medic at the University of Bergen and the senior author of the study.

“We feared that such chemicals, by steadily causing a little damage to the airways day after day, year after year, might accelerate the rate of lung function decline that occurs with age.”

Office bosses are among the latest converts to deep cleaning. In an era of hot desking, workstations have a hard life. They’re used every day, often by different people. Keyboards, mice and other equipment become breeding grounds for bacteria.

With the increasing spread of highly drug-resistant bugs, like MRSA, proper computer and telephone cleaning is becoming increasingly important. But ultrasonic cleaning is just part of solution, regular cleaning and maintenance is also needed.

“We talk about standards of cleaning but I don’t think a lot of people have them anymore, they just do what they think is enough – no more than that,” says Mr Yendley.

We swabbed 30 tablets, 30 phones and 30 office keyboards and sent the specimens off for analysis. The results showed that shockingly, many keyboards and tablets were dirtier than an office toilet seat. And in some cases we had to immediately inform the owners that their computer needed serious cleaning. Enterobacteria, which can include strains of infection. such as e.coli and other bugs that cause illness, was present in high-risk levels in 8 of the 30 tablets we tested. High-risk represents more than 1,000 units of enterobacteria per swab, which compares to 10 units per swab on the toilet seat we tested. Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause severe food poisoning, was found at high levels in three of the tablet and smartphones we tested. In one case we found a tablet with a count of 600 units of staphylococcus aureus per swab. By comparison, the toilet seat we tested had a count of less than 20.